The Long Island class of carrier represents a new philosophy in fighter delivery. When it was discovered that the relative high cost of getting into space made military hardware much scarcer than in the surface navies that the fleet had been patterned on, it was realized that relative to the strength of opposing forces, a single fighter was a powerful unit, and that the need for more than a handful of fighters was only possible in times of all out war. Replacing the large fleet carriers on the drawing board with carriers for individual squadrons allowed the same requirements to be met by smaller ships and smaller crews. Traditional carrier names were, however reserved for use on any such fleet carriers eventually built, and it is traditional with ships of the Long Island class to refer to them by squadron designation only.